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Monthly Archives: April 2018

Marvel. I love you. Disney. I love you. I’ve got nerd cred. I’ve been reading comic books for nearly 40 years. I have piles of them squirreled away all over our house. I have a small army of action figures that, if I had any sense about me, I’d put in boxes and not display everywhere like I’m a character from Big Bang Theory.

I’ve got people already on my Facebook page arguing a) we’ve waited 10 years for THIS so it MUST be AMAZING; b) if Lord of the Rings is long and boring but was made for the geeks, then this can be just as episodic and ponderous too; c) Roy, you just don’t GET it … Empire Strikes Back was dark and sad so this is a logical step in the Marvel narrative.

Folks, my critique of this film is not with the source material, and if I – a 45-year-old man who carries a well-worn velcro wallet which I bought at Hot Topic (!) and which is festooned with ALL the Marvel characters – feel letdown by the film, it is NOT a personal slight to you.

I don’t envy Infinity War directors The Russo Brothers who had to follow the zippy bottle rocket that was Black Panther, a film which successfully balanced the hyper-detailed mythology which those of us far too immersed in comic book lore desire with a sharp, cinematic storytelling that enveloped general audiences in an inspiring and evocative new world.

On the whole, the Russos do a great job in Infinity War of balancing far too many personalities. I can only imagine the war room they set up to figure out which spandex-clad beings would show up where and at what time and how many lines they did or didn’t receive (let alone then wrangling the egos of actors portraying said superheroes). This is no Batman & Robin debacle, nor is it a Watchmen-level slog or a Batman v. Superman cluster.

About 80% of Infinity War is transfixing and, well, fun. It is episodic to a fault, but the characters are drawn consistently from their respective franchises without any jarring beats, and there is a kicky joy to seeing Tom Holland’s delightfully irreverent Spider-Man lost in space or watching Chris Hemsworth’s Thor team up with Bradley Cooper-voiced Rocket Raccoon. Hemsworth’s God of Thunder is by far the brightest spot in the film; Dave Bautista’s Drax has one of the flick’s funnier lines when he opines that Thor “looks like a pirate had a baby with an angel.”

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Pretty much everyone from the Black Panther cast fares well also, bringing some much needed buoyancy and energy to the film’s saggy late-middle section. All the returning Avengers play to their strengths as best they can in an overcrowded film. Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron Man) is still so Robert Downey, Jr. Chris Evans is stoic and warm and rather square as Captain America. Mark Ruffalo is pleasantly fussy as Bruce Banner (The Hulk). Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch) are pros so they make the most from underwritten roles that mostly require them to look worried and wave their arms around periodically. And so on.

At the heart of the film is a very interesting and thoughtful dynamic between “big bad” Thanos (a surprisingly nuanced motion capture performance from Josh Brolin) and his adopted daughters Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan). Thanos’ villainous motivation (not dissimilar from Killmonger’s in Black Panther) is that society is incapable of caring for itself and that, with resources as finite as they are, the best solution is simply to slaughter half the population of the universe. Okey dokey. His daughters – who tend to hang out with the heroic Guardians of the Galaxy – aren’t down with that, and their familial tension, in a nod toward King Lear, gives the film a much-needed narrative grounding.

However, ultimately, the Russos have far too many moving parts to address, let alone future franchises to set up, so the dysfunctional Thanos family reunion gets overshadowed quickly. I won’t spoil any surprises (to be honest, there aren’t as many surprises as pre-release marketing would have you believe), but there is a substantial and gutting moment between Thanos and Gamora around the mid-way mark. The scene works so well, in an almost Dickensian fashion (think the sadder, creepier parts of A Christmas Carol), due to Brolin’s and Saldana’s performances. Saldana particularly breaks your heart. As an audience member, I was invested.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Yet, a final act then follows that piles up the body count (not a spoiler – I’m not saying who) and just as quickly establishes a mechanism where all that mayhem could be undone (not a spoiler – I’m not saying how). I, personally, felt emotionally cheated. The film ends with a fairly dispassionate and obtuse note, and we are left wondering “what next?” Unlike, say Empire Strikes Back which concludes with a Saturday matinee cliffhanger as somber as can be (“will we see Han again? where is Luke’s hand? who’s his daddy really?”), we already basically know the outcomes in Infinity War will be reversed. It feels like a bait and switch. I didn’t like it when Superman “died” in Batman v. Superman, and I don’t much care for it here, even though Infinity War is The Godfather compared to anything DC has released.

(By the way, I’m tired of everyone now saying a bleak middle chapter with a non-ending in a genre film series has a raison d’etre just because of the role The Empire Strikes Back plays in the original Star Wars trilogy. So there.)

I apologize for my rant. I apologize for my indulgences with this “review.” Infinity War is not a bad film. In fact, it’s an interesting exercise in corporate synergy that is far more artistic than it might have been in other hands in another era. I enjoyed so many moments in the film, but, ultimately it doesn’t hang together in the compelling, capstone tapestry I’d hoped it would. Like Drax’s description of Thor, this movie is a bit like a “pirate has had a baby with an angel” – trying to accomplish too much (crowd-pleaser, merchandise machine, epic denouement to a decade of pretty damn great movies) with a whole lot of heart but just not quite enough substance. This movie left me exhausted.

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[Image Source: Wikipedia]

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).

My mom Susie Duncan Sexton‘s essay “WAIT! PRIOR TO TOSSING ME INTO A WEATHERED HATBOX…READ ME FIRST” will be published in the latest Henry Ford Centennial Library “Big Read” anthology “What’s in a Name?” Event is this Saturday to celebrate its publication.

Hope you can attend the Wrap-Up on Saturday, April 28, 2 p.m. at Henry Ford Centennial Library, 16301 Michigan Ave., Dearborn. Free and open to the public.

This year’s Legal Marketing Association – LMA International Conference in New Orleans saw some of best legal marketing professionals come together to network, discover new technologies, learn leading business development strategies, and stay informed of what’s happening in the industry. As a result, the 2018 LMA Annual Conference had several key takeaways for legal marketers and business development professionals alike.

I wouldn’t exactly call myself an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan. I like his musicals more than I might care to admit. There is something intoxicating about an indulgently baroque score that is riddled with random hair metal guitar licks and disco drum beats. I loved an album he did eons ago with his brother Julian Lloyd Webber called Variations in which he basically “dance remixed” Paganini into submission. I suspect that’s where my fascination with musical reinvention began. Oh, I saw the film Evita about a dozen times in 1996 at the peak of my Madonna obsession, and I dearly loved it, although it doesn’t hold up as I’d hoped in light of more celebratory, effusive, less self-conscious film musicals that would follow.

I’m even less sprung on “He is Risen” #SoBlessed Easter spectacle and pageantry. I grew up in a small town in Indiana, and, at some point, Easter took on an almost insufferably sanctimonious quality among the social media posts I would read and observe from friends and family members. Not sure how and when that happened, but, as for me, I’m more of a “Here comes Peter Cottontail” #CadburyEgg kind of Easter person.

I was wrong. It was pretty fabulous with a dystopian post-punk quality that was more George Orwell than Mel Gibson and a color-blind casting approach that was more Sesame Street than Sean Hannity. Producers Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, and Marc Platt generally know their way around a musical (NBC’s Peter Pannotwithstanding). With this production, they seemed to be less interested in staging a family friendly holiday confection (remember that creepy Wal-Mart clan from The Sound of Music Live’s commercials? shudder) than in presenting allegorical commentary on the fragmented state of our world today.

Lewis

It is a testament to directors David Leveaux and Alex Rudzinski that they allowed the music and the performances to drive the spectacle, avoiding the overdone trap of previous live musicals with their veritable nesting doll of detailed sets that segue seamlessly one to the next. No, with Jesus Christ Superstar, settings were evoked through language and sound and cleverly used props and set pieces, surrounded by graffiti strewn walls and scaffolding used for exits and entrances and the occasional flogging and/or hanging (fun times!).

Maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention in vacation Bible school, but I wasn’t always sure what the heck was going on during Jesus Christ Superstar. The ubiquitous commercial breaks after every big number derailed narrative momentum. The sound quality overall and the challenges of actor articulation/projection while performing in a vast, echoing Brooklyn warehouse contributed as well. The visibly live audience was a smart if distracting choice, adding to the cult-like adoration of the titular figure but often drowning out important lyrical bits.

Jesus Christ Superstar arguably also had the most uniformly excellent cast we’ve seen yet in one of these live productions. Nary a scenery-chewing Christopher Walken nor balsa-wooden Allison Williams in the bunch. The theatre vets faired best, with Dixon and Lewis leading the charge. Lewis as Caiaphas was suitably haunted and haunting as the Jewish high priest who organizes the plot to rid this rabble rouser from their midst. The show was grounded beautifully by his easy-to-take-for-granted performance.

Dixon

In the showier role as Judas, Dixon left it all on the field (sometimes to the detriment of diction), offering a portrayal rife with conflict and fear: love for a friend versus uncertainty that Jesus’ chosen path made any damn sense at all, layered with just enough resentment and jealousy to make it utterly believable. His final number, performing the show’s title song, was a barnstormer, replete with costuming that made Dixon look like a glittering disco ball.

Alice Cooper preened and strutted appropriately as King Herod whose one song (literally “King Herod’s Song”) is basically a toxic vaudevillian turn, leeringly challenging Jesus to provide evidence of any miraculous abilities at all. Cooper didn’t have to do much other than just be Cooper whose decrepit looks overlaid with his signature stage makeup and hair made for a compellingly repulsive portrayal. With Herod’s song and the subsequent “Trial before Pilate” (British stage vet Ben Daniels made for a kinky, mustache-twirling prefect … still not sure what I thought of him but I couldn’t look away), the die is cast for Jesus and the institutional conspiracy to cut short Christ’s anarchic message of love and inclusion and acceptance entered its final stage.

That was the aspect of this production that spoke to me the most, perhaps because of this ugly current milieu in which we live. Take, for instance, those brave, big-hearted Parkland kids who are pilloried by the falsely fair-and-balanced prophets of “freedom” every time they speak their truth. This production did SUCH an effective job demonizing the forces working against Jesus, did SUCH an effective job depicting the ugly mobs calling for his crucifixion, did SUCH an effective job revealing the insidious intersection of greed and power-mongering that it sent chills down my spine. I was less interested in the show as reflection of faith as I was in its revelatory “more things change, the more they stay the same” positioning.

I kept wondering how Fox News, who cozies up to such a feverishly Evangelical base, would find a way to deride this production which carries in its heart a pretty arch critique of the very demagoguery that is Fox’s stock-in-trade these days. I’m still waiting. Maybe they’ll just counter with a live production of Grease 2.

John Legend was a bit of a cipher as Jesus, which accidently (or intentionally?) aided this direction. His voice all Nat King Cole creamy smooth was an interesting juxtaposition to the jagged rock orchestration surrounding it, but his acting range just doesn’t exist. He can’t help but exude kindness, but otherwise his facial expressions seemed limited to surprised, placid, and worried … with barely any distinction between those. It didn’t much matter. The machinery of Webber’s music, coupled with the sharp overall POV of the production, formed an unstoppable steamroller with Legend along for the ride. When Legend as Jesus finally disappears into the great beyond (with a floating cross effect that was gobsmacking in a “how did they do that?!” way), we are left with the uncertainty of living in a world that punishes kindness and rewards cruelty.

I am no theologian by any stretch, but I read some online comments where people unfamiliar with the musical wondered why it didn’t continue on through the “resurrection.” I think the fact that it does not address that part of the tale imbues Jesus Christ Superstar with a greater universalism.

We leave the piece with as much doubt as we entered. We are given no easy answers. Is Judas’ agnosticism valid? Why do we live in such a world where compassion is rewarded with utter rejection and abject fear? Why is love seen as weakness? Why are the biggest pronouncers of their faith often the worst hypocrites?

That is my idea of a “passion” play. Sounds like something Washington, D.C. should watch. On repeat.

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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).